Another Summer’s End
...It was summer yesterday; now it’s autumn.
Echoes of departure keep resounding in the air.
––Baudelaire
We trail the water’s edge
in step to a buoy’s song
on the natural rhythm
of swells and waves and charm.
The sky tonight, streaked
in a wildfire of color,
takes flight on wings
of western gulls.
Like memories love makes
and promises it keeps,
this is how I wish
to remain here, content
to tuck myself inside the beat
of bird wings along this shoreline
walk, to inhabit each other’s lives
like our souls do their bodies.
As guests here, let us continue
to wander beneath a low ceiling
of feathered clouds––
long and endless.
When,
a lament
When
the dead grew too heavy
for the heart to bear,
when memory
could not console
nor priest nor god
nor soaring bird,
when you reached
for me and I was not there,
when what was
almost said
is what endures.
Andrena Zawinski’s latest poetry collection is Landings. She has two previous award winning collections: Something About, a PEN Oakland Award, and Traveling in Reflected Light, a Kenneth Patchen Prize. Her poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She runs the SF Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com.
...It was summer yesterday; now it’s autumn.
Echoes of departure keep resounding in the air.
––Baudelaire
We trail the water’s edge
in step to a buoy’s song
on the natural rhythm
of swells and waves and charm.
The sky tonight, streaked
in a wildfire of color,
takes flight on wings
of western gulls.
Like memories love makes
and promises it keeps,
this is how I wish
to remain here, content
to tuck myself inside the beat
of bird wings along this shoreline
walk, to inhabit each other’s lives
like our souls do their bodies.
As guests here, let us continue
to wander beneath a low ceiling
of feathered clouds––
long and endless.
When,
a lament
When
the dead grew too heavy
for the heart to bear,
when memory
could not console
nor priest nor god
nor soaring bird,
when you reached
for me and I was not there,
when what was
almost said
is what endures.
Andrena Zawinski’s latest poetry collection is Landings. She has two previous award winning collections: Something About, a PEN Oakland Award, and Traveling in Reflected Light, a Kenneth Patchen Prize. Her poems have received accolades for free verse, form, lyricism, spirituality, and social concern. She runs the SF Bay Area Women’s Poetry Salon and is Features Editor at PoetryMagazine.com.